Holiday Leftovers 2: Coach and Team of the Week

Holiday Leftovers 2: Coach and Team of the Week

01/02/2014, 6:00am CST

By Marc Hugunin

Robb Belschner and Park Center are the tops for Week 5

Robb Belschner of Andover is our Coach of the Week

Even with its loss to Roseville Monday night, Andover has been the surprise of the season so far. Many observers credit first year coach Robb Belschner for the Huskies improvement from 12-16 a year ago to 7-2 on New Year’s Day this year.

Belschner isn't sure about that, stressing continuity rather than change. “We have five seniors who have played extensive varsity minutes, a very competitive group of girls,so I thought the potential was there,” he said.

“The key is, we’re just playing better defense,” Belschner continued. “Every year it gets a little bit better, it’s a process. And we’re learning to trust each other moving the ball. So I’m optimistic, I always thought there was a lot of potential.”

“We’re a small team” he added, “we play a lot of guards. We don’t have a lot of size so we have to rely on great half court defense—pressuring on the ball, doubling the post, making sure we have good help side, we’re just really trying to push the ball. When we do those things, we’re pretty good.”

We asked about Haydn Becker, our co-Player of the Week the previous week. “She’s a great player,” Belschner said, “she does everything for us. She scores, she rebounds, she moves the ball. We’ve asked her to guard posts, we’ve asked her to guard point guards. She’s just doing everything for us now, she’s a great player and a great leader.”

“And we have a lot of kids who are stepping up,” he continued. “We have three captains who have all been so positive. Katie Yoder is our vocal leader. She gets people pumped up before games and calmed down in the huddle. Madi Hahn shoots the lights out, she knows the game, she rarely makes mistakes. And Amelia Leger, some times you don’t notice her, she does a lot of the dirty work, but then she’ll score 8 or 10 points. We ask her to guard the other team’s best player sometimes.”

Looking ahead, Belschner said, “Our conference is so good, I’ve never seen it so good. There’s a lot of great teams and a lot of great coaches. All we can do is take one game at a time. We play good teams every night, we’re going to have some ups and down, and how we end up will depend on how do we deal with that. We go one at a time, and we’ve got to outwork everybody.”